Breaking Point
by lostlikealice
Summary: It's a guess who at first. Tell me who you think it is. I'll add to it as soon as I get some feedback.. Short, but interesting concept I think.
1. Default Chapter

Staring out at the full moon. With fingertips gently brushing hair away. Heart full of regret.  
  
A murderer at 18.  
  
No one would forget. Name always remembered, in history books, all books, household name.   
  
Everyone would remember, no one would forget, but nobody really _knew._  
  
_Why did I do it? Why was I tempted? Why did they prey on me?  
  
Weak. I'm weak. I was weak and I am weak and I always will be.  
  
Loser. You let yourself be used for them. And now forever everyone will remember but you, only you, will know.  
  
_"No. I've had enough."   
  
The long dagger glinted in the light of the full moon. 


	2. Revelation

Chapter 2: Revelation

Ginny stared wide-eyed at the boy kneeling on the ground. The blade in his hand, the window in the common room flashing the light of the full moon onto the walls.   
  
"Ginny.. Ginny.. help me.." His voice was pitiful. She wanted to help him, she really did, but as she looked over the destruction she turned her head away.   
  
"Neville.." she choked back a sob, and fell to her knees. "How could you..?" She managed.  
  
"I.. I.." He overlooked the scene. It didn't seem real. None of it could be. The twenty five bodies laying there, first years, second years, third years. All victims of his breaking point.   
  
_Guess I'm not much of a Squib anymore_, he thought wretchedly. His hand brushed away hair plastered to his face with sweat and tears. Ginny looked at him with pity in her tear-darkened eyes.  
  
"Neville.. You're working for.. you-know-who?" She looked him straight in the eyes, then looked away. She couldn't pity him after this.   
  
"He said he'd give me power if I.. if I helped him with.. with.."  
  
"Harry?" she finished the sentence weakly. He nodded.  
  
"Neville," Ginny shook her head. "How could you, Neville? You.. you're not like this."  
  
"You don't know me," he said bitterly. "You don't know who I am, Ginny. No one does. No one except them."  
  
"I thought I knew you, Neville," she said. "But I guess I was wrong." She stifled a sob and ran out of the common room, slamming the portrait behind her.  
  
"No!" he yelled. He slammed a fist into the ground. "No, no, no!"   
  
_Malfoy had gone too far. One tease too many.  
  
He had mentioned St. Mungo's.   
  
Neville knew he needed power, he needed something, something to make himself worthy to himself, to the others, someone or something to stand behind to make himself more than something for them to _pity_.  
  
He made a deal with the devil. He went and he agreed and he told him how he could catch Harry. He set up the trap. Harry went missing. No one knew anything. He had went into the Forest and.. nothing.  
  
Ron approached Neville in the common room. Grabbed him by the front of the robes and threatened him. He knew, he must've known. "You're a rat," Ron seethed. "A rat."   
  
"It's better than being a doormat, Ron," he spat into Ron's face. He recoiled and slammed Neville against the wall. "You.. you.." His face twisted in hatred while he thought of something to say to Neville.  
  
He elbowed out of Ron's grip and pulled out his wand. He turned the wand on the common room and.. _  
  
That was how it had happened. Most of the Gryffindor house dead, at his hands. Just because he was weak. Because they had preyed on him. Because he had preyed on him.  
  
Now _he_ would be punished for the sins of them. Just because he couldn't take it anymore. They had pushed him to his breaking point.  
  
He sat among the many dead in the once happy common room and put the blade to his wrist, as the joyful flames danced shadows on the walls.


	3. Retribution

Chapter 3: Retribution  
  
He stared at the Minister of Magic. He struggled in his bonds but they held tight. Pulling at the bonds hurt. The long cut across his left wrist, the beginning of his suicide attempt, had been healed but he still felt like it was bleeding. But why were they even on him? What would he do anyway, he didn't even have a wand.  
  
"Neville Longbottom," Fudge said. His eyes flickered over the boy's haunted face. His face hardened. "Neville Longbottom, you are charged with the murder of 25 of your own housemates. Have you anything to say?"  
  
"Don't treat them like they're the victims," he muttered. "They drove me to it." He turned his face away from Fudge's glare.  
  
_I was naive to think I would only see one case like this.._"Repeat what you said, Longbottom," he snapped.   
  
Neville glared at him bitterly. "Why couldn't you just let me die? I was dying, you bastard, I wanted to die, I want to die! Just leave out of things that don't concern you, you old bastard!"  
  
"You're being charged for 25 murders on your own hands," snapped Fudge, "and you're an accomplice to the disappearance-" he swallowed hard- "of Harry Potter. You have nothing else to say but your death pleas, Longbottom?"  
  
"I hate you! I hate all of you!" He spat in Fudge's face. "Why couldn't you just let me _die_, Fudge?!"  
  
"We seek retribution for you. The many families who are robbed of their children.. would you want to see the killer who killed your brother, your sister, be set up as a martyr, Longbottom?" Fudge turned away, eyes blazing. _More insistent than Crouch's son, even. _  
  
"Thanks to the Ministry's poor work I have no family!"   
  
_Grandmother, you were the beginning of it.. I lost you last year, then no one could take me to St. Mungo's and I was all alone again. An orphanage? Never. I stayed in that house and begged for the money to eat. I was half-alive, and now I'm dead, completely dead, because I have nothing and no one left. _No _one_.  
  
"Your father and mother, that's right." Fudge stood with his hands clasped behind his back, not facing him. "Driven mad by the Cruciatus Curse, performed by Death Eaters." He cleared his throat. "Why then, boy, would you turn on your friends and join the leader of them who deprived you of a normal childhood?"  
  
"You don't know me. No one does. No one except them." Neville turned away violently, the bonds around his hands still constricting him. "You wouldn't understand at all, you didn't feel it, I couldn't take the pity or the hate or the misunderstanding on their faces any longer!"   
  
Fudge pulled Neville's chin so he was looking Fudge directly in the face. That wasn't what he saw, however.  
  
Ginny. The 16 year old redhead sitting there, next to her mother, father, and remaining brothers. Ron had gotten the blast of the Death Curse. Tears streamed down her haunted face, and for one moment their eyes locked. She broke the stare first and leaned, sobbing, into her mother, who comforted her.   
  
Molly Weasley looked at him with horror and hatred and ran her hands over Ginny's vibrant red hair, whispering comfort to the sobbing girl. The rest of the family gave him similar looks, like he was a freak, like he was what he was. A madman.  
  
The Minister of Magic nodded over to the men in the corner. "I'll go to my chambers to make a decision. Please take him to his cell."   
  
They walked over to Neville and released his bonds, just to replace them a second later. He struggled but their grip was rock hard.   
  
"Ginny!" he yelled. The girl's head snapped up. "Ginny, you never did it, you were always nice to me, I don't blame you, Ginny-" he was cut off as they dragged him through a door that slammed shut with a clang.   
  
------------------------  
  
The audience shuffled and muttered as the sentencing was about to begin. A voice cried out, "Silence in the court!" Everyone quieted.  
  
Neville sat, tied to the chair by magic, glowering at Fudge. "Well?" he asked.  
  
Fudge stood there, then nodded grimly. "You, Neville Longbottom, are guilty of the deaths of 25 people by your own hands, and the accomplice of one death. 26 lives all taken by you. What say you?"  
  
Neville said nothing, revealed nothing.   
  
"You are sentenced to life in Azkaban," Fudge said coldly. "You will live your life without magic, with dementors, in an empty cell."  
  
"Why, Fudge, I've lived without magic most of my life, it's not much of a change," he said. Fudge ignored this.  
  
"Take him away." So they did. Undoing the bonds and redoing them as last time, they led him away. He said nothing as he was led away, until he reached the door. Then he struggled and yelled.  
  
"Fudge! You bastard! _They_ want me to die, _I_ want me to die, _you_ want me to die, why can't you just _kill_ me?" He started to cry. "You vindictive bastard," he sobbed. "You merciless son of a bi-" the rest of the word was stifled as they put bonds over his mouth and dragged him through the door. The clang had a rather final sound this time.   
  
Ginny looked over at her family. Her eyes still had the haunted look and dark eyes. "I couldn't have saved him," she said, "but I could've tried." She pressed a hand to her face. "I thought he'd eventually stand up for himself, but he took the abuse-then his grandmother died and I really did get scared for him. But.." she trailed, then put her face in her hands. "I never thought it'd come to this. Never."  
  
"They never thought I'd come to this," he said to the guards as they apparated him to Azkaban. "Never." He nodded quickly. "But they were wrong."


End file.
